


Medicine

by BebeUnit



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Oneshot, PWP, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, the kids aren't alright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 23:16:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6097194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BebeUnit/pseuds/BebeUnit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She wants to hate him. But she has nowhere to go, and he’s warm and strong and giving, and he’s right. This is what she needs: to feel wanted."</p><p>A one shot intended as a missing scene from my multichapter fic Peace is a Lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Medicine

**Author's Note:**

> It's been declared, on Tumblr, that this week shall be Reylo Smut Week. Here's my contribution.

Rey used to spend her sleepless nights staring at the ceiling, but now she trains. Usually Kylo works her hard during the day, hard enough that she’s dead on her feet by dinner. But about once a week Rey reprises her old pattern of insomnia. She steals up the stairs to the training hall to beat the mannequins and droids, practice her forms, and throw weights around. Then she climbs the platform structures that overlook the training hall and lays down to stare into the dark until she sleeps. There are skylights in the hall, and it’s the only time in the four months since her abduction from Ahch-To that Rey sees the stars.

More than once, Kylo has found her sprawled on the causeways in the morning. He nudges her awake with a boot and they get to work. They don’t speak of it. There’s nothing to say. Kylo won’t go easy on her because she’s tired, and Rey doesn’t want him to.

Since their Force Bond began developing, Rey has slept better. When her mind begins to spiral down into that cold pool of sorrow, Kylo pulls her out. He tells her stories in her mind, recounting the battles and political maneuvers they’ve read so much about in a dispassionate tone that distracts her and helps her to sleep. It’s another thing they never speak of. Neither of them can afford to acknowledge the care he takes with her in this.

Today, she was angry with him. She knows he has a cache of saberstaves in the armory. She’s seen them delivered in ones and twos, glimpses of shining hilts delivered by service droids for Kylo’s inspection. He examines each one, activates blades of all colors – red, blue, green, yellow, magenta – before sending them to the armory. They’re magnificent weapons. Magnificent weapons that Rey isn’t allowed to handle.

She’s ready. He knows she is. Even Luke, ever cautious, let her train with a real saber and not a flimsy training staff. It is insulting, but Kylo doesn't trust her. He thinks that she’ll fight her way to the hangar and steal a ship, and _he is right_. Rey probably will. So Kylo isn't inclined to make her any more lethal than she already is, and Rey can't really blame him for that. But she can hate him, or at least she can when he isn't standing in front of her looking so much more like a man than a monster.

After Rey lies awake in bed for an hour, Kylo begins the familiar ritual. He’s picked the Battle of Hoth, but Rey doesn’t want his comfort tonight. She puts her mind on lockdown and climbs the stairs to the training hall, sparing a lingering glance at the locked door of the armory as she passes.

Rey starts with Djem So, guiding her feet through the familiar patterns of the form, breathing deeply and pausing in each stance. She picks up her pace as she loops through the form a second time and the stiff wires of her training staff whip through the air. It is usually calming, but tonight it only frustrates her further. She resents the insubstantial tool she wields, but more than that she resents the status it represents. Despite what Kylo would prefer her to believe, she’s a prisoner here.

There will be no escape.

Even if there were, who would have her now? Neither Master Luke nor General Organa are likely to welcome her back. Rey imagines Finn’s face when he discovers what she’d been doing, who she’s been doing it with, what she has become. Rey has slept with the enemy. She has touched the dark side, and worse than that, she _likes_ it. She doesn’t want to give it up. Surely there is room in the galaxy for actions fueled by passion. She can accomplish so much, do so much good with the power Kylo offers her.

But she won’t bow to Snoke, and until she does Kylo can neither free nor empower her. And so the skills she’s worked so hard for go to waste. What good is a sword that sits in a glass case? Rey needs to be useful. It’s the only way her thoughts stay away from the dangerous pools in the deep recesses of her mind, the dark traps of loneliness where she has no worth at all.

_They left you. They left you with that stinking scrap lord and never came back. They didn’t love you._

_No one ever has._

Rey throws her staff across the room as hard as she can and it clatters to floor with little drama. Her scream is satisfying, though. Rey pounces on a training mannequin, beating it relentlessly with feet, fists, elbows, knees, and head. It’s artless brawling she learned on Jakku, dirty and unpredictable and effective. These are her roots, beating other scavengers away from her haul and fending off the more predatory denizens of Niima. It’s rarely let her down.

There’s a sound behind her, a cleared throat. Rey spins, caught up in the rush of adrenaline and the fury pouring through her, and Kylo almost gets caught by her punch. Almost. Instead her catches her fist in his hand, envelops it in his enormous palm. Rey always feels like a child when they engage like this – the ease with which he is able to defend himself against her is humiliating.

He’s in loose, rumpled sleep clothes and his hair is disheveled, and it’s disarming. Rey doesn’t try to hit him. Instead she just stands there heaving and glaring. She wants to hate him. He more than deserves it.

“You’ll exhaust yourself up here and be useless in the morning,” he states calmly, as if that were all that mattered.

Rey sneers at him, makes it clear that he is unwelcome. “Go away," she growls. "I don’t need your help to sleep.”

She tries to pull her fist from his grip, but Kylo tugs her closer. “I know what you need,” he muses, and Rey scoffs - she wants to slap him.

“You’re so fucking arrogant--”

He interrupts her with a growl. “No, I’ve just been in your shoes, Rey.” She lets out a barking laugh at this, and Kylo’s grip on her wrist tightens. “Do you think I showed up in Snoke’s chamber and got handed this position? I was _groomed_ , I was _trained_ , just like you. I had to earn it. Earn trust I wasn’t even sure I wanted.”

Rey balks. He is lying, of course, he must be. He is trying to sound more relatable so she’ll trust him, so she’ll relent and see him as a teacher instead of a captor.

“I know the spiral you’re stuck in. See?” And there's the spark at the edge of her mind, a telltale nudge that he is trying to come in and show her something.

Rey has stayed out of Kylo’s mind as a rule. She relegates herself to the periphery where she can sense his current emotions and receive anything he projects to her on purpose. The rest scares her. She saw it once, a flaming torrent of pain and fear and fury that threatened to burn her. But now he is pushing that pain into her mind: memories of the skulking, scarred creature, of rough stone under Kylo's knees, of a thousand injuries silently endured. Snoke is not a kind master. Next to him, Kylo is a blessing.

And there's loneliness. Bone-deep and heavy, like hers, but she doesn't want to see any more. Rey pushes the memories away from her consciousness.

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?” She means to mock him but her voice catches, and she chokes on the words.

“You’re supposed to trust me when I say that I know what you need, Rey.” There isn’t a trace of bitterness on his face. He sighs, blinks slowly, stares at her with more softness than she’s used to… he feels sorry for _her_ , Rey realizes, and the thought baffles her. “Come downstairs. Let me help.”

Kylo leads Rey down to his room and pulls her to the messy bed, white sheets and grey blanket already tangled and pushed to the footboard. His robe and belt are thrown on the chair. It’s the most lived-in his austere room has ever looked.

She sits on the bed and instantly he’s kissing her, working his mouth over her collar bone and shoulder as he runs long fingers over her upper arms. Rey shivers as he scrapes his teeth across her neck and Kylo exhales heavily, reverently. His hands move to her waist and he’s pushing up the fabric of her top, easing it up and over her breasts.

She wants to hate him. She wants to run out of the room, out of the base, wants to get as far away from here as she can. But she has nowhere to go, and he’s warm and strong and giving, and he’s right: This is what she needs. To feel wanted. To feel valued. To know that someone in the galaxy cares for her, even if it’s not a form of care that many could understand.

Kylo palms her breast, humming appreciatively into her shoulder as she slides her hands beneath his shirt to splay her fingers over his scarred chest. He pulls her tank over her head and lowers her back to the bed, crouching over her in a predatory fashion that doesn’t disturb her as it should. He’s a monster, surely. But he’s a monster that refuses to threaten her, though she keeps expecting him to.

His mouth is on her breast, her ribs, her abdomen. Rey buries her hands in his hair as he tugs the loose sleep pants from her hips. Kylo’s hand is over her sex and he looks up at her, makes pointed eye contact as he slides his fingers into her. Rey’s breath catches and she arches into his hand, despite herself. Then he starts to move, and she cannot keep herself composed. He has her hip in a vice-like grip, but he isn’t rough tonight. He moves his hand gently inside her, ghosts over her clit with a thumb, the whole time staring into her eyes as if they have some secret to divulge. When Rey finally closes her eyes and throws her head back into the pillows, Kylo ducks his head between her legs. His tongue is deft at this, firm and agile, and he _knows_ her now. Rey pulls at his hair, whimpers and mewls as he brings her close and then backs off, so that each time she rises just a bit higher on rolling waves of pleasure that never crest. It’s only when her eyes water, when her legs shake, when she begs him that he turns her over and shoves his cock in to her cunt, wet and waiting.

He still can’t face her when they fuck. Rey knows, and she thinks it probably ought to offend her, but she’s just has happy not to look into the eyes of this murderer as they take part in this insane perversion. It isn’t love, it’s medicine. It’s mortar to fill the cracks in their walls, to hold the despair at bay for one more night.

Rougher now, more frenzied. Kylo leaves little half-moons on her hips with his fingernails and he pulls her pelvis against his. He tries to catch one of her wrists mid-stroke, pulling her hand down beneath them.

“Touch yourself. Come,” he commands her, breathlessly. Rey attacks her clit with two fingers, pressing and pinching, so much rougher with herself than Kylo ever is. She’s had less practice than he has, but Kylo has prepared her well and she hasn’t far to take herself. Rey bucks against him and gasps as the tension suddenly releases, gripping fistfuls of the sheets in her hands. Her muscles spasm and then relax, and she's so tired, so terribly mentally and physically exhausted.

Kylo has a ways to go though and Rey relaxes into his rhythm. Little whines rip from her as he deepens each stroke, and Rey knows he’s close when he pulls her hair – always he has to hurt her, just a little. It’s benign enough, and sometimes Rey even finds it exciting. Her relationship with pain has always been complicated.

Kylo comes with a final, guttural moan, slamming his hips into her backside two more times before resting his weight on his hands over her, now spent. It takes fifteen seconds or so before he gets up and releases her, and Rey crawls up to the pillows and collapses. She’s trembling, numb. Kylo joins her, pulls her into the crook of his arm. With her head on his chest, Rey smells ashes and sweet sweat.

_The Rebel Alliance had captured a viper probe, and were aware that Darth Vader’s fleet planned to ambush them. When the fleet arrived, Admiral Ozzel overshot his position coming out of light-speed, which gave the Rebels further advance warning. He was immediately replaced by Admiral Piett, who ordered four Gozanti-class cruisers to deliver their surface force to the Moorish Moraine…_

Rey's sleep goes undisturbed for the first time in months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Insert somewhere between chapters 7 and 8, I guess.


End file.
